Exercise 1: Seeing The Pulse

Look at your fingertips. As you gaze, you will see pulsating gold or blue light about 1/8 to 1/4 inch out from your skin. It pulsates, so it comes and goes. It seems to have a specific cycle, almost like some sort of etheric breathing. Look on your arm too. Look at another person's fingertips to see the pulsating light traveling around their fingers. It is empty up to the 1/4 or 1/8 inch mark where you will distinctly see an outline and pulses moving through it.

Exercise 2: See The Aura Between Your Hands

Hold up both hands in front of you, fingertips pointing toward each other. Look for smoke-like, goo-like, fluid-like substance that pulls like taffy as you pull your fingertips away from each other. It may have a bluish, whitish or gold color, or simply be "clear" light with no distinct color. It might even look like a heat wave of some sort. Move one hand upward or downward, leaving the other hand stationary. You will see that a line of smoke-like light jumps from one fingertip and connects with the other, since the next finger is more in line.

Exercise 3: Aura Viewing

Look at the aura of a person standing against a white background or a dark background. You might even want to try this while you are standing in line at the bank or post office if the opportunity presents itself. Try looking for the first and easiest layers to perceive, the easiest being the emotional layer (layer 2). Look for blobs of light, color or an outline.

Exercise 4: Feeling Auric Energy 1

Hold your hand up, palm upward or outward, with your eyes closed. A partner slowly moves a pointer finger toward middle of your palm, starting two feet away and coming in toward your palm. Signal when you feel the partner's energy move into yours and you can feel it in the palm of your hand. You will feel a slight tingling, tickling or pressure. Now have your partner trace circles over your palm while you have your eyes closed and feel the magnetic movement. You will be surprised how easily you will be able to pick up on this energy.

Exercise 5: Feeling Auric Energy 2

Lie down on your back or sit in chair. Have a partner hold a hand over different parts of your body. Where is partner's hand? You will be able to feel the magnetic signature of your partner's hand.

Exercise 6: Perceiving The Aura In Nature

We live in a literal sea of auras, but nowhere is it easier to see than in nature. I have found that there is a rosy glow around all trees and plants. It was easiest to see in tree bark when I was a beginner. There seems to be some sort of pink life-force glow emanating from everything. Perhaps that is why nature is so nurturing to sit in, since we all react positively to the color pink (or green at the conscious level). Spend time in nature and look for the life-force in things. It is also easy to see in very large rocks. Another exercise in nature is to gaze at the aura along a line of trees against the sky. You will see a beautiful glow coming off trees against a blue background.

Exercise 7: Observing The Universal Energy Field (UEF)

Barbara Brennan suggests a wonderful exercise that was quite a surprise in the beginning when I saw it. The UEF is the energy all around us. It is easy to see when you gaze at the sky and focus your eyes on a spot about two to three feet in front of you, maybe only one foot in some instances. At first you will see nothing, but suddenly you will see thousands of tiny white specks that light up, shoot a short distance, most times in a curved swirl, and then disappear. There are some grey ones too, it seems. They are especially active in sunlight, moving faster and having more brightness to them, but they can also be seen on grey cloudy days. There are fewer of them, they move slower, and more of the grey ones are present, but they are there. If you hold your hand up to them, you will see that they interact with your hand, some of them getting sucked into your energy.

Strangely, these little specks do not seem to be perceivable when you look elsewhere besides the sky. I have often wondered about this, but have never found any conclusion as to what this phenomena is. It does not seem to be an issue with the eyes, for if you look at various objects, you will not see the UEF. If you look at a line of trees against the sky, the specks will not be in the air where the dark green is, but they will be where the sky blue is. Why this happens, I don't know. I have sometimes wondered if the sky itself is the weak link in this hologram deck for consciousness called Earth, and perhaps that is where we can most easily see through the veil that physical reality is! Just a speculation on my part. No one really knows what the UEF is, but science does agree that it exists, even though it isn't understood yet.

This is an exercise that almost every beginner will have success with within a try or two. Once you see the little speckles of the UEF, you'll see them easily any time you look. They are quite beautiful, and sometimes when I just need to relax and take a break from my mind or emotions, I simply gaze at their dance and it seems to have a calming effect, the way watching wind in the trees does.

Exercise 8: Dowsing The Aura

This is a really fun exercise to do in a group or in your class that you might teach on aura viewing. Create dowsing rods by taking the innards out of two ordinary pens. You will then have two handles for your dowsing rods. Then cut two metal clothes hangers (they must be metal) and create squared off perpendicular rods in an L shape. Insert the short end of the rods into the plastic pen "handles" and the rod will swivel freely around.

Now, stand on one side of the room (you may need a large room if your partner or the group have powerful auras) and have your partner face you on the other side. You must have at least 12 or 15 feet between you. Have your partner step slowly toward you, holding the dowsing rods steady and level, pointed straight at your partner. As your partner steps forward one step at a time, the rods will swivel open when the edge of your partner's aura touches them. As the partner comes closer, notice how far away he or she is from you, and this will give you an indication of how large your partner's aura is at that moment.

Auras expand and contract quite easily. Some people have gained the skill to expand the aura at will, especially those who have done a lot of meditating and reach deep states consistently. Have this same person attempt to expand his or her aura by meditating for a few moments and start over again. See how much larger the aura is, just by centering and relaxing the mind! It is quite instant and people feel the difference. I have demonstrated this in my classes several times, and you can too as you perfect the ability to enter meditative states quickly and easily. I first walked toward the person holding the dowsing rods and showed that the aura was a rather ordinary size since teaching some types of classes is a mental activity, whereas others where I am leading a meditation is a deep trance activity. When I stepped back, closed my eyes, quickly went into a meditative state and consciously expanded the aura to fill the room in every direction, the rods moved open from across the room without even taking a step toward them. Others in the room often reported with surprise that they literally felt the energy of the edge of the aura passing through them as it blew open. (This by the way, is the state needed for transmitting to your students deep meditative states of mind, by filling the room with your aura, getting into a very deep meditative state, and including all the students in your awareness who are sitting in your auric field with you. This is how the great masters transmit enlightened states to their students.) This is a very easy way to see results immediately of evidence of the aura and will help convince the non-believers in your classes.

Exercise 9: Taking A Snapshot Of The Aura

After concentrating long enough to see the aura, close your eyes. For a second or two you will see the aura afterimage. You have only one second or two until your photosensitive cells will stop vibrating and sending visual sensations to the brain. (http://www.thiaoouba.com/see_aura_color.htm)

Exercise 10: The Aura And The Pendulum

This is a very interesting exercise. Have your partner lay down on a table or the floor and hold a pendulum over each of his or her chakras about 1 to 3 inches away from the body. The pendulum will literally pick up the spin of the chakra and show you the actual path of the chakra as it moves. This can tell you if someone has a healthy chakra or an imbalance there. Barbara Brennan includes a very detailed chart in her book Hands Of Light (1988) showing what each of the different types of spins mean pertaining to imbalances in the body. If you plan on doing auric and chakra healing work in your practice, this chart is a must have.